Trigger Warning: This story discusses mental health struggles and a suicide attempt. Please read with care.
Broadway legend Audra McDonald is speaking openly about a time when she struggled the most. The six-time Tony Award winner reflected on her mental health struggles and her suicide attempt at age 20, when she was studying at The Juilliard School in New York City.
“My biggest dream was to be on Broadway, to tell stories through song and to live in that place where music and emotion meet,” Audra shared in a speech at the Hope for Depression Research Foundation luncheon on November 12, per People. “I had never been closer to my dream, and yet I had never been further away from it.”
She said that even as she pushed toward the career she had always wanted, something inside her felt increasingly out of place.
‘The Voice They Were Trying to Shape Wasn’t Mine’
GettyAs the training grew more intense, McDonald said she started to feel a widening gap between the person she was and the version others wanted her to become.
“The voice they were trying to shape wasn’t mine,” she said. “The path they wanted for me wasn’t the one I had dreamt of. That disconnect between who I was and who I was trying to be started to break me down.”
Her mental health began slipping, but she didn’t feel ready or able to acknowledge it. “I was too proud to admit that I was falling apart,” Audra said. “I had fought my whole life to get there. And once I finally arrived, I was lost. Completely lost.”
The pressure only intensified her anxiety and depression, leaving her struggling to keep up with the world around her.
‘My Own Mind Felt Like an Enemy’
GettyMcDonald described what it felt like to push through a severe depressive episode while trying to perform at a top arts institution.
“When you’re someone who already struggles with anxiety and depression, that kind of pressure doesn’t just make you tired,” she said. “It eats at you. It scrambles your thoughts. It makes your own mind feel like an enemy. And I smiled through it. I joked through it, said I was fine. I wasn’t fine.”
Behind the humor and smiles, she was in crisis.
“One night, I broke. I slit my wrist,” she said. In that moment, she reached out for help and called the Student Affairs director. “She stayed with me. She called for help. She saved my life.”
Audra said she was then admitted to Gracie Square Hospital, a psychiatric hospital, for one month following her suicide attempt.
Finding Grace, Healing & a New Understanding of Herself
GettyMcDonald recalled that first stretch in the hospital as confusing and painful, but ultimately life-changing.
“I was disoriented,” the “Private Practice” alum recalled. “I was unsure of who I was anymore. It was the darkest time of my life. But it was also the beginning of my healing.”
She stressed the critical importance of proper treatment in that chapter. “This is important,” she emphasized. “I want to say this clearly: that time I needed the medication. I needed it to keep me safe from myself.”
Now 55, Audra shares daughter Sally, 9, with husband Will Swenson, and is stepmom to his and ex-wife Amy Westerby’s sons Bridger and Sawyer. Looking back, she reflects on the hospital’s name that helped her survive.
“Maybe there’s a little bit of beautiful irony or grace, the fact that the hospital that saved my life was called Gracie Square,” she added. “At the time, I didn’t understand what grace really meant. I didn’t know how to give any to myself. But now all these years later, I see it differently.”
Although she noted that healing took time and a lot of therapy, McDonald ended on a message of hope. “Grace was waiting for me long before I knew how to claim it for myself.”
